Judge sides with residents over retreat

Baltimore County Digest

May 10, 2006

Baltimore County residents opposed to Loyola College building a retreat center in the northern county designated for agriculture scored their first win in the fight yesterday, when a Circuit Court judge sent the case back to the county's Board of Appeals.

Circuit Judge Ruth A. Jakubowski sided with residents in ruling that Loyola was required to show that its project would not have more negative effects at the proposed site than it would elsewhere in the agricultural zone.

A county zoning commissioner and the county's Board of Appeals had granted a special exception to zoning regulations that would have allowed Loyola to build a lodge and five dormitories on a 10-acre portion of a 53-acre parcel in the Parkton area.

"This is a farming community. We're fighting to keep it that," said Lynne Jones, a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Loyola's Multiuse Center, the group of residents who appealed the earlier zoning decisions.

The judge said in her 13-page ruling that the Board of Appeals had correctly applied state law on the requirements for the center's sewage plan.

Laura Barnhardt

Mobile home tax

Proposal to repeal levy is pulled

A proposal to repeal Baltimore County's tax on mobile homes has been withdrawn before a scheduled vote of the County Council.

Councilman Joseph Bartenfelder said yesterday that he decided to scrap his bill after government officials met with residents this week to explain the rationale behind the tax, which has been imposed since the 1950s.

The tax, equal to 7 percent of a mobile home owner's lot rent but capped at $20 a month, accounts for the fact that mobile park owners pay property taxes on "raw" land, not on structures, even though most mobile homes become permanent structures, county officials say.

Josh Mitchell

School calendar

Hairston's suggestion goes to board

Leaders of Baltimore County's Muslim community remain hopeful that county school officials will change a proposed school system calendar to cancel classes on Muslim holidays before they approve it.

"The more you say no, the more I am convinced that one day soon you will say yes," Bash Pharoan, president of the Baltimore County Muslim Council, told the school board last night.

County school Superintendent Joe A. Hairston's recommendation for the 2007-2008 school year was passed on to the board at last night's meeting. Board members are expected to vote on the proposal in June.

Pharoan said before the meeting that he was happy that the school system's calendar committee, which drew up a proposal for Hairston, asserted that tests should not be scheduled on religious holidays.

A school board committee had recommended earlier this year that the school system refrain from administering tests on holidays. It also advised the system to label the days on which religious holidays are celebrated on the wall calendar it prints for families and staff.

Essex

Police seek man in drive-by shooting

Police were searching for a Baltimore man in an apparent drive-by shooting last month in Essex, county police said.

Police said they have obtained an arrest warrant for Darryl Bolling, 18, of the 4000 block of Ardley Ave., in the attempted murder April 20 of a teenage boy near a bus stop.

A man fired several shots into a group of people standing at Sandalwood and Nerbay roads, and 16-year-old Devon Perkins was shot twice, according to police. The teenager was taken to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center with nonlife-threatening injuries, police said.

Bolling is described as 6 foot 3, weighing 150 pounds, with shoulder-length dreadlocks and brown eyes. He is also known as "Day Day" and has a tattoo of "13 1/2 " on the left side of his neck and "Tomyka" tattooed on the right, police said. He is considered armed and dangerous.

Anyone with information about Bolling is asked to call the Baltimore County Police Department at 410-307-2020 or Metro Crime Stoppers at 866-7-LOCKUP.